Saturday, February 25, 2012

The Scale of the Universe

Peer through a telescope at larger and larger objects in the universe, or through a microscope at smaller and smaller objects, and you continue to see form and structure. Here is a good illustration, from Cary Huang, of these different worlds (click on the image and once it loads use the wheel on your mouse to zoom in or out):

14 comments:

Cornelius, in what sense is all of this "spontaneous"? In truth, it seems to be a rather long drawn out affair; one slow step at a time, building upon the previous steps. Whether you think there is some intelligence behind it all or not, there is nothing "spontaneous" about it.

Cornelius, in what sense is all of this "spontaneous"? In truth, it seems to be a rather long drawn out affair; one slow step at a time, building upon the previous steps. Whether you think there is some intelligence behind it all or not, there is nothing "spontaneous" about it.

Cornelius fancies himself the clever little Creationist wordsmith. He just loves to equivocate between different meanings, like his infamous equivocation over the fact of evolution and theory of evolution. By far the most common usage of "spontaneous" is "arising quickly without planning or premeditation", as in "the crowd erupted with spontaneous applause for the speaker". The more obscure meaning is just "arising by natural causes". So technically Cornelius isn't wrong, just deliberately misleading.

Cornelius isn't paid by the DI for honesty. Cornelius is paid to produce dishonest Creationist propaganda, and produce it he does.

It is spontaneous in the sense of naturalism, where all the living things came from CO2, H2O, N2 and slices of phosphorus, sulphur and metal oxides.But for chemistry the spontaneous direction is the inverse, where all living things go to CO2, H2O, N2,...., from the Gibbs' energy. These are the most stable molecules of the universe.

I'm almost sure Cornelius uses the word "spontaneous" to signify simply "without external intervention". Not a very sensible word to use without further clarification, unless you want to exploit ambiguity.

It's amazing however it arose. It's also true that no one - no one - knows how it arose.

One other impression that emerges, the more we learn about it, is that there is less and less reason to think we are anything special in all this mind-boggling vastness and complexity - except to ourselves, that is.

Cornelius, in what sense is all of this "spontaneous"? In truth, it seems to be a rather long drawn out affair; one slow step at a time, building upon the previous steps. Whether you think there is some intelligence behind it all or not, there is nothing "spontaneous" about it.

If the universe is a product of spontaneous generation, then everything in it would be as well. This is why it's absurd to believe it all came about by pure random chance. All the evidence points to a Creator/Designer.

Skeptics, whether religious or not at all, carry a certain angryness around with them. That attitude further clouds the discovery of what can be known. I wish they'd all stay home until they agree to be nice.

“I’m going to talk about the Bell inequality, and more importantly a new inequality that you might not have heard of called the Leggett inequality, that was recently measured. It was actually formulated almost 30 years ago by Professor Leggett, who is a Nobel Prize winner, but it wasn’t tested until about a year and a half ago (in 2007), when an article appeared in Nature, that the measurement was made by this prominent quantum group in Vienna led by Anton Zeilinger, which they measured the Leggett inequality, which actually goes a step deeper than the Bell inequality and rules out any possible interpretation other than consciousness creates reality when the measurement is made.” – Bernard Haisch, Ph.D., Calphysics Institute, is an astrophysicist and author of over 130 scientific publications.

Further notes:

What drives materialists crazy is that consciousness cannot be seen, tasted, smelled, touched, heard, or studied in a laboratory. But how could it be otherwise? Consciousness is the very thing that is DOING the seeing, the tasting, the smelling, etc… We define material objects by their effect upon our senses – how they feel in our hands, how they appear to our eyes. But we know consciousness simply by BEING it! – APM – UD blogger

The argument for God from consciousness can be framed like this:

1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality. 2. If consciousness is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality. 3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality. 4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kpDwWetu66fBRlPM7zjA5BpHzcu5wBY7AdB7gOz51OQ/edit

Psalm 139:7-14 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.